Remember, my secret diet? Well it turns out it wasn’t secret at all, but I was participating in the 8-hour diet from Men’s Health. You can see the rules here. The 8 Hour diet is a hot topic on my blog so I figured its about time I addressed it.
I was part of 6 week trial, where 3 days a week I could only eat for 8 hours each day, the rest of day I was fasting. I found it pretty easy to stick to this type of eating especially because I was assigned the 3 day a week group, so the other 4 days I could eat when I wanted.
They, being the authors of this diet, had a list of “power foods” to that you should try to get in each meal, these foods included spinach, apples, lean meats, low-fat dairy….pretty much the same stuff of any diet. I found that aspect of the diet easy too.
They also included an 8 minute circuit style workout that you do every morning or most mornings. I however, skipped this completely. I just kept with my own workouts of running and circuit training with my DVDs.
Did it work? There is tons of information out there about intermittent fasting, which is what this diet is based on, just do a quick Google search and you can find a mountain of information. For me, personally, while I did see a weight loss each of the 3 weeks I was on the diet, it was NOT anymore than I had lost following my own eating guidelines. By the way, I stopped following this diet because I found out I was pregnant, I couldn’t follow these rules with the amount of morning sickness I was dealing with. I have no idea if this would be recommended for pregnant women, although I doubt it because most experts on pregnancy say to eat every couple of hours to keep blood sugar steady.
My conclusion. If this a type of diet you’d like to follow go right ahead. I’m not an expert or professional in this field but different things work for different people, and if you think its something you can stick to then its worth a try.
I need something I can stick to long-term. I have counted calories most days nearly everyday for over year now. That’s the what I attribute my 30 pounds loss to. On days that I don’t count, I always over eat. I feel like I could count calories forever if that what it takes, now maybe that will change in the future when I have children or a different career. It works for me, so that what I do.
If you have questions, feel free to ask me. I might not know the answer but I will do my best.
Living Made Healthy 
Hi Erin, I was browsing about the 8 hours diet and i found your blog. I’m interested in this 8 hours diet and I’ve tried it for a week now. I didn’t loose any weight. My question is:
I’m not a tea or coffee drinker, so upon rising up, I start my day with warm milk or Milo drink(warm), is that ok? Or i have to stick to just plain water since i don’t drink tea or coffee.
Hi! The idea is to have tea because it doesn’t have any calories or fat or protein, which is keeping your body in the fasting mode. I’d suggest hot water with lemon if you don’t want tea or coffee. Milk has protein and fat is it would take your body out of the fast mode.
Hope that helps.
Thanks for stopping by my blog!
You might take a look at my amazon.com ebook, The 4-Hour Diet is better than The 8-Hour Diet. It shows and analyzes daily weight variation over a 2-year case study that demonstrates an exponential decay of excess body fat, even if you pig-out during the 4-hour unrestricted eating interval.